"Faith in Progress" Week 3

Welcome to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world.

We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before.

Now, let's get to it.

My name is Guillaume, and I just got a cold and I'm losing my voice, so you're gonna get the uh pleasure of hearing this unusually deep voice this morning.

That's a bit as if uh Barry White had a French accent.

And you can also mark yourself safe from angry preachers because even if I wanted to, I cannot yell at you.

But my job today is to finish the series that we started called Faith in Progress, and I will do so by talking about doubt.

Um we're gonna be discussing if I believe in God, if I have faith in God, does it mean that I never doubt God?

And do I need to have the answers to all the questions?

Um what does it look like for our faith to be in progress like this in the face of doubt?

And we're all in progress, our faith is in progress.

I'm French, and so my level of English is also in progress, and I'm raising kids who are native speakers of English.

So sometimes my kids get to teach me some English words that I didn't know, which is a fairly humbling experience.

Here's a word that they've been using a lot lately that I definitely did not learn at school in French.

It's pretty hard to pronounce, and you guys are native English speakers, you maybe you can help me understand what it means.

It's hard to pronounce, it goes like this.

Uh-huh.

I'll use it in a sentence for you.

Hey, who left their dirty dishes on the table?

Uh-huh.

Who left an open bag of chips in the car?

I don't know.

Is your bedroom clean?

I don't know.

And then if I ask if they say yes, my bedroom is clean, then my next question is, are you sure?

Do you think that I would agree that your bedroom is clean?

And then what I'm getting there is full-on skepticism.

Who can know something like that?

I have no idea.

We can be sure, really.

Uh in that case, they become very demanding of evidence, right?

You can't affirm those things until you're absolutely certain.

So they're asking for more evidence.

It's great skepticism.

Thankfully, it's not a skepticism that they've brought to the question of God.

It's not uh, do you think there's a God?

Uh-huh.

Do you think Jesus was risen from the dead?

Who's to say?

You know, who can be sure about something like that?

Well, I'll tell you who thinks that we can be sure about something like that.

And it's Luke, the author of the third gospel.

He starts his story of the life of Jesus with those words.

He says, Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

Do you feel that's what you have about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus?

Certainty?

It's a pretty high standard, but he's saying, This is why I'm writing this thing down, so that you may have that, so that you can be sure.

In the very same spirit, John, who also wrote A Life of Jesus, he said this at the end.

He told you exactly why he's writing the life of Jesus.

He says, now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these ones are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

And then later on in his epistle on 1 John, he says this again.

He says, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

So this issue of faith and believing and knowing is no small thing.

This is how we know that we have eternal life.

You know, this is this great message that on Christianity we're not saved by our good works, we're saved by faith.

It's not merits, it's not our own righteousness, it's our faith in Jesus, who is the one who paid the price for our own sins, so that if we believe in him, we will be saved.

So belief is really important.

Eternal life literally hangs on the balance on this one.

So we want to be sure.

Um and so we want to see how doubts fit in when we doubt those things of the Christian life.

What does that look like and where does that fit with our faith?

So we'll see three things this morning.

First, we'll distinguish between doubt and unbelief.

So that's doubt on one side and belief on the other.

They're different things and we'll see how they differ.

Second, we'll see the value of doubt, and I'll bring myself to saying a few nice things about doubt, uh, and we'll see some of the things that can happen through doubt.

But then in the third part, uh we'll see what to do with doubts.

And here, spoiler alert, I'm gonna make the case that we want to destroy them all.

Just kill them all.

So let's start with doubt and unbelief.

Um, if you want to see the difference between doubt and unbelief, you see them right in the very first story of the fall for Adam in the garden.

Uh you can see that that story goes from certainty to doubt and doubt to unbelief.

Look, the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Surely.

So you have the certainty straight from God, from the mouth of God to Adam.

Adam is told.

And then the woman is created right after, so after the command has been given, and so you can see already that she needs to trust Adam to tell her what God said about that command.

And it's interesting that the trust is so important, and we can see that the devil attacks directly, even in marriage, trust of your spouse, right?

Um, so that's an interesting pattern we see in there.

But trusting reliable messages from God is really essential to our Christian life, and it's it's really the tragedy that trust has been so eroded.

I mean, we live in the world where it's hard to trust anybody these days, even with AI.

Like, I don't know if I trust my eyes about anything that I can see.

Um, and yet God is using this mechanism of trust, right?

Witness.

And so the woman is created, um, and she has to trust her husband, and then um doubt is introduced by the serpent in the form of a question.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God has made.

He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.

So you have the first question, did God actually say, which is introducing the doubt?

And then the doubt turns into unbelief, you shall not surely die.

And then the unbelief is completely fulfilled when they go ahead and eat the fruit, indeed.

So just raising questions and wondering about you know how sure we are about God and his promises, that's not outright unbelief, that's doubt.

Um but we want to be careful that those questions and doubts don't lead into unbelief, especially since many times intellectual doubts can be taken as a pretense for what really is unbelief.

Sometimes unbelief masquerades as purely rational doubt.

You know, it's like, oh I'm just raising questions.

You know, it's not unbelief.

Um and raising questions is okay, unbelief is not, which is uh an interesting uh distinction that you can see until you understand that distinction, there's something that's really confusing in the Bible that at least confused me.

Do you think, according to the Bible, that it's okay to ask God for a sign?

Yes?

No?

Is that ever okay?

Well, if you look in the Bible, there's different approaches, there's different responses that God gets when we do that.

You might be thinking of the story of uh Gideon in the book of Judges, where he's commanded by God to lead the Israelites to uh free them from the Medianites.

Pretty big ask from God.

And he goes and says, Oh, I'm gonna need to be sure here.

So he puts out a fleece and you say, God, if you get this wet while everything around it is dry in the morning, then I'll know.

And God does that.

And then the next day it's like, all right, so now let's do the opposite, you know, get that dry and everything else around wet, or whatever the opposite was.

And God does that.

And then he goes and says, Alright, I know, I'm sure.

So God seems to be just fine with those signs.

Um, but there are other times where God is not all that happy that we're asking for signs.

And you can see that when the Pharisees and the Sadducees go to Jesus try to keep my voice, we'll see.

In Matthew 16, uh the Pharisees and Sadducees came and to test him, they asked him to show them a sign from heaven.

He answered them, When it is evening, you say it will be fair weather, for the sky is red, and in the morning it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.

You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.

So he left them and departed.

Right?

They're not getting their sign.

So what's the difference between them and Gideon?

Well, they're in outright unbelief.

They don't want to be convinced.

They're just taunting him and asking for, oh, give us more, give us more, give us a sign, prove it.

And Jesus won't have any of this.

But this is not, you know, this is this doesn't have to be you with your honest questions about God.

So that's really the big difference.

It's faith with doubts versus outright unbelief.

Um you can see that Jesus is telling them the problem is not even in your mind, right?

He's using their own ability to reason about the weather.

He's saying, You you understand arguments just fine, you understand evidence just fine.

What's the problem then?

It's their heart.

An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, he tells them.

That's the problem, it's in the heart.

Um also he says, you know, you'll still have the sign of Jonah, right?

The sign of Jonah is a reference to the fact that he's going to be buried for three days and then be rising again.

So this thing, like there's still a sign.

Um, sometimes it's important for us to realize that if we feel like we're hungry for more signs, maybe we should at least not dismiss the signs that we have been given.

There's another story from straight from Jesus that kind of highlights the need to take advantage of the signs that God has given us, and it's the story of the rich man and Lazarus.

Do you know that story?

So Jesus is telling the story of this poor guy named Lazarus, and then there's a rich man who lives and enjoys his life in riches, and he dismisses Lazarus as a poor person, and then there's a big reversal where we're thrown in the afterlife, and we see the rich man is tormented, and somehow in conversation with Abraham, um, and he sees Lazarus has been saved, and so he sees this is like it didn't pan out the way he he wanted.

And in this strange conversation with Abraham, the rich man realizes, Man, I got lost.

We need to tell my brothers so that they don't get lost as well.

And so he tells Abraham, uh, and he said, Then I beg you, Father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may want them, lest they also come into this place of torment.

But Abraham said, They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.

And he said, No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.

He said to him, If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.

If they don't believe the prophets, they won't believe, even if a man rises from the dead.

So it's obviously ironic because Jesus is foreshadowing the fact that he's going to rise from the dead and people still won't believe in him.

But the the big story is this there are some signs that you've been given, and we need to take advantage of those, look into that, and then sure ask for more if that's important to you.

But don't dismiss the signs that you have been given.

And the fact that some of that disbelief can masquerade as intellectual rational doubt is something we need to be careful of in cultivating cultivating our hearts, right?

Like ultimately, if the issue is not entirely intellectual, then we need to have a change of heart as much as a change of mind.

And this is what's a bit frustrating for a preacher like me.

It's it's not something I can operate, right?

I can't change hearts, I cannot operate that heart surgery.

Thankfully, we worship a God who says he does exactly that.

Ezekiel 36, he says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.

So he can soften hearts and overcome our unbelief.

He did it to me when I was an atheist, and I started to reach out wondering, could there be a God?

And I asked God for a sign and gave me all sorts of very powerful experiences that led me to become a Christian.

So don't let your unbelief masquerade as purely intellectual doubt, um, as honest doubt.

But if you are, repent and believe, and I pray that God does that heart surgery on you.

Um it's really what I wish for everyone to walk who walks in this door that God would do that life change on them.

Um But you know, if you have no unbelief and you're really just in a place of serious doubt with big questions that are unanswered, and even if your faith is just holding on by a thread, let me say a few positive things about doubt.

So this is our second part in defense of doubt.

So what can be said for doubt, for doubters?

Um the first thing that I want to say is at least it's not unbelief.

It it feels a little bit like the last few presidential elections where I felt like each candidate, the best thing you could say about them is, well, at least it's not the other one.

Well, uh faith with doubt, at least it's not unbelief, right?

We've just seen it's a big difference between an honest intellectual doubt, a struggle to really trust God where it hurts, versus outright unbelief and the decision to say no.

Furthermore, the the doubts are actually understandable uh in this life, and it's somewhat expected even.

Um I mean there's an invisible aspect to our faith, right?

Can you see God?

No, God is immaterial, right?

So you you cannot see him.

There's this aspect of I can't see quite well, I don't have all the data right in front of me, and I do need to trust, I do need to have this faith.

You know, the Bible says we walk by faith, not by sight.

Um and so in that context where we don't have all the answer yet, where we don't fully know, we should expect that there's gonna be some doubt um in this life.

Now we see in a mirror dimly, says Paul, but then face to face, right?

Later on, yeah, but right now it's dimly in a mirror.

I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So in this life we should expect to have some doubt.

Um and also I should say in this life, uh faith is hard sometime, right?

Even if purely intellectually you know that it's rational, that this is the right thing to believe, even when you know it's fully rational, faith still takes guts.

You know, if you want to see what a faith that pleases God looks like, the Bible points you to one famous example of faith.

You know which one that is?

Abraham.

People brag about the faith of Abraham several times in the New Testament.

We are pointed back to him and say, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

And both Paul and James quote that verse, and they point to Abraham as an example, as the father of faith, we're told.

Um so what did Abraham do that demonstrated in his his faith, right?

What did he have to believe?

Well, first he believed God when God promised that he would give him a child, even though he was super old and his wife as well, so that was not an easy one to believe just on the face of it.

But then uh James points to another event in Abraham's life where he says this was the faith of Abraham at works, and it's when he accepted to sacrifice his son when God asked.

Do you think that took guts?

Do you think he better be sure that God was asking this?

I mean I can imagine the inner monologue, right?

So um Abraham, what are you doing?

Well, I'm preparing an altar to sacrifice my son.

You what?

Well, uh God asked me to.

Are you sure?

Uh yeah, I'm pretty sure.

Are you very sure?

I discussed this passage very early on in my Christian life with my pastor at the time when I was trying to understand the different ways that God talks to us, and I couldn't try, you know, I couldn't see like I wasn't hearing the audible voice of God, and he was trying to work me through the various ways that God talks to us.

And with that story, I was like, I hope he got a pretty clear message from God.

Uh and my pastor is like, yeah, brother, um, I you know, God speaks in different ways, but if God told me to sacrifice my son, you would find me on my knees fasting and praying for a very clear explanation from God.

So faith takes guts, but and it's not that it's irrational, right?

I think uh I have a great picture for what trusting biblical faith looks like with evidence but still requiring guts.

And it's one imagery that you can see pretty much at the end of every serv uh every uh service here in mana.

If you pay attention, at the end I go and uh take my kids from mana kids, and I have two baby girls, one five-year-old and one seven-year-old.

And um, the first thing they do is they run back here, they come and greet their mom who plays the keyboard on stage, and after that, they love nothing more than to just jump from that stage into my arms on the floor, and then I grab them and put them on the floor.

And I love to encourage this.

I sit I stand back far enough that it's scary for them, and I don't hold my arms out or give them a sign, I just sit here and they know, they know what's uh what I'm up to, but I'm just standing there with my arms like this and I stare them in their eyes.

I love to see this.

They are mustering up the courage to jump.

They are looking at me, and I can see like the emotions like easy for real, this is good, this is gonna happen.

But they know full well that one, I'm strong, I'm gonna catch them.

And two, I love them.

I'm not gonna let them fall and crash.

I'm staring straight at them, but I love them process, I love to see them processing this.

Like I know exactly what I should do, but man, it's still scary.

Like, I still have to jump, and I have to trust my dad to catch me once I jump.

And I think that's exactly the picture of faith in the Bible.

It's not irrational.

You have all the information, you have the good reasons to trust God, but you still gotta jump, and then sometimes it can be a bit scary and it takes guts.

It's not a blind leap of faith.

I hate that imagery.

It's like, yeah, you have to take a blind leap of faith as if it's in the dark and you have no idea if God is there to catch you.

No, that's not what faith is.

You have the good reasons, but it still takes guts.

When I was telling that story at the teaching team meeting, Jake said, Well, the same exact feeling happened when we went to the men's retreat last week, where they went down and I'm gonna mispronounce this in rappelling, is that how you pronounce it?

Woo! Okay, so they went rappelling down a cliff, and Jake was saying it's the Same thing.

I know exactly that this rope is gonna hold me, and I know exactly this is reasonable, this is safe, I I can do this, but it still takes guts to really let yourself lean back and actually go down on that rope, right?

And so faith is rational, but it still takes guts.

I wasn't there, but you know, I I trust.

So it it's a little bit the same thing for us today, and so it's not sacrificing your son like Abraham did, but um you know it takes God today to live in faith, it takes God to forgive an offense, right?

It takes God to confess your sin and be forgiven.

It takes God to give your money or your time as God commands us.

It takes God to follow God, even when we know it's truly the rational thing to do.

And it's a lifelong thing, right?

So when we're talking about doubt and belief in the Christian faith, it's not just like, oh, you were an unbeliever and now you believe in God, that's it.

Right?

You have to trust God every step of the way.

Our faith is in progress, it's progressing on that progress bar.

Um so when my daughters are fired up after the first jump, you know exactly the next thing that they're doing.

Right?

Again, again, again, and they're doing it again.

And I think we need that attitude, right?

We need to trust God at every jump.

But then, yeah, what's next?

What's the next one?

Another consideration that makes doubt not so bad, um, you know, maybe an encouragement for you who believe but have some serious doubts, is that it's not the strength of your faith that saves you, it's the object of your faith that saves you.

And what's the object of our faith?

It's Jesus.

So salvation is ultimately binary, right?

In the end, we are saved or we are not.

Right?

This is gonna be an in or out kind of a deal at the end of life.

But faith is not binary, right?

We've just seen it, it's a progress bar, we have increasing levels of faith.

So how do you translate if we're saved by faith that is not binary, and we translate this into an outcome that is purely binary, how do the two relate?

Very simply, any level of actual trust in Jesus saves a hundred percent.

It's not the strength of your faith that saves you, it's the object of your faith.

To illustrate that, uh, one of my favorite New Testament scholars by the name of D.A.

Carson has a great story where he talks about the uh the Israelites on the night of the first Passover, where they've been told that the angel of death is going to visit every household and that if they put blood around their arch, their door, then they will be spelled from the angel of death.

And so D.A.

Carson has this story of two Israelites who are discussing, like, how did you do this?

I mean, uh, did you hear this word?

This is incredible, this is pretty scary.

And one of them is fully certain, it's like, yeah, absolutely, God has told us we're gonna do this, everything's gonna be just fine.

And then there's the other one who's like, I don't know if I really believe this, I don't, I don't know.

Can we be sure this is very scary?

There's life at stake.

And he and and the other guy's like, well, but okay, but did you still put the blood?

Yeah, I did, but I don't know if it's gonna work.

And then DA Carson smirks and says, So, what happened when the angel of death came?

Well, they were all saved.

Why?

Because it's not how strongly he believed, it's that he did take the step of faith, he obeyed, and then it's the savior who actually can be trusted.

Exact same thing with Noah's Ark, right?

I preached on Noah's Ark a few weeks ago, and Noah was building the Ark to be saved, you know, it was a picture of the salvation that comes in Christ.

Um, but do you think Noah was fully certain?

Do you think that he doubted maybe when he was building the ark?

You know, the weather was fine, and it was like, I don't know if I believe this will flood, storied from God, but he still built it.

Ultimately, he has built the ark, people get on the boat, they are saved, even if they were not all that sure that the boat was needed or sufficient.

Right?

So faith gets you in, and it's not how strongly you believe, it's the object of your faith that's is strong.

So a weak faith in a strong Christ saves you.

And then finally, the last thing that's nice about doubt that I will say is that uh doubt can push you forward on the progress bar.

So um if you look at that, I love that visual of the progress bar even in the uh in the intro where it goes up and and you're like I don't know if you're sitting in front of a loading progress bar on your computer, sometimes you're like, come on, move forward, get to this, you know, push it forward.

And doubt kind of feels like that, where you have you have your unanswered questions and they're bothering you, and you have this urge to say, let's press forward, let's figure this out.

And so sometimes if the doubt can be like annoying you enough, there can be incredible motivation for you to look into it.

Like I want answers, and I won't rest until I have those answers.

Um, this is I've experienced this over and over again.

Um many times when I actually feel the pain of being in a public forum and I'm I'm being asked a bunch of questions.

I love answering good questions in public forums like this, and then sometimes there's a question that comes and I give an answer and I'm like inside, I'm like, I didn't like the answer that I just gave.

That doesn't sound really good at all.

It's not strong.

I hate that feeling.

I absolutely despise it.

But the times where that has happened to me, there's been incredible motivation to come by and say, I need a better answer than this.

How do I get my answers?

And then I go deep in research, even maybe down a rabbit trail that takes me a lot of time, a lot of energy, but then finally I get the oh, that's how it works, and that feels so good.

It's kind of a relief, like, now that makes sense.

Ah.

And many of my writings, even like several of my books, where I've written extensively about a topic, is just me going down to the bottom of a question that is like, ah, oh, that was there.

I need to tell everybody.

And so if that's a little bit of the effect that you can get from having unanswered questions, then let that motivate you and go and to go to the bottom of those.

So this is the most I can say that's nice about doubt.

And now this is the last part where I said, What do we do with those doubts?

I say show them no mercy, kill them all.

Don't let those doubts rob you of the joy of your salvation.

And don't let them rob you of the next step of trust, trust in God's plans for you.

We saw on the progress bar when it took steps, right?

And then there's this moment where like the bar comes back a little bit, kind of a step back, and this is what doubts might do for you, right?

There might be some things that even you used to believe and have resolved for you, and then the enemy came and pierced holes in your faith and robbed you.

Your faith becomes bumpy, and if you don't deal with them, they create bigger problems.

I will not be silent.

So I would say we're not afraid of doubts, but we need to address them.

So what do we do?

What do we do with those doubts?

First, I would say that we should talk about them.

Um acknowledge them.

Don't let things fester in the dark.

I really like to think of doubts like it's healthy to think of them as temptation.

Um openly talk about them, you know, with the most relevant people to address them.

I think there's a big similarity with like temptation in a marriage where we are ashamed of that temptation and so we don't talk about it.

And it's tragic because the very act of talking about it would be the thing that's most empowering to fight it.

So it's like the child who's been wounded and is you want to put a band aid on it, and they're like, no, don't touch it, it hurts.

Well, yeah, but showing it to me is the very thing that will help it not hurt.

So talk about your doubt.

And I've really truly found this to be true in our marriage as well.

I said think of this as like temptation.

Um, it's so empowering to talk.

This is proven true in my own marriage.

We're talking openly, asking the hard questions.

Um it's completely removed the sting and the actual strength of the temptation.

And the most dangerous has been when we're not talking about those things and raising the hard questions where things are just assumed and we don't talk about it.

So similarly with your doubt, like if you doubt your faith, the riskiest place that you can be is in silence caused by shame.

So let me remove some of that shame and that sting and just say we all have big questions we don't have the answers to.

We're not sure about that.

So relax about that and just talk about it.

Like we've seen, having doubt doesn't mean that you don't have faith, or even amazing faith in one area and weaker faith in another area.

Right?

So take heart about the area where you have great faith, and let that empower you to talk about the area where you're struggling a bit.

You can see that great mix and the cohabitation of great faith and doubt in one person in the story in Mark chapter 9, where there's the father of a son who has been tormented for years and demon-possessed, and Jesus asked his father, um, How long has this been happening to him?

Mark 9 · chapter mention

And he said, From childhood, and it has often cast him into fire and into water to destroy him.

But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.

And Jesus said to him, If you can, all things are possible for one who believes.

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, I believe, help my unbelief.

Right?

You have the two in the same person, like I believe.

He's taking that step of trust, but he's saying also I have a hard time, like help my unbelief.

So it's a it's such a simple gesture, right?

You can see the father already like, I believe, and and you need to help me, but help me.

So what do we do without?

We talk about them, and then we do exactly what this father did.

You ask for help.

Right?

You ask for answers, you ask for the evidence where it's needed.

Um many times we don't ask because we're afraid that the answers are not what we want, that maybe what we believe is actually false.

That fear needs to be just a jettison.

Like there is answers, there are good answers, go to the bottom of it and you'll find out.

So faith is not opposed to evidence, and God is very happy that we should look for them.

Actually, Jesus works with doubters like that who lean forward in trust.

He had a disciple who was exactly like this, right?

Doubting Thomas.

Read the story.

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the twin, was not with them when Jesus came, so he didn't see, right?

So the other disciples told him, We have seen the Lord, but he said to them, Unless I see his hands, the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hands into his side, I will never believe.

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them.

Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, Peace be with you.

Then he said to Thomas, Put your finger here and see my hands, and put out your hand and place it in my side.

Do not disbelieve, but believe.

Thomas answered him, My Lord and my God.

Jesus said to him, Have you believed because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.

So it's pretty powerful.

Like he's not blaming Thomas.

He works with him.

Say, you need it to see.

Go ahead.

See and then yeah, he says, You've seen and you believe.

Blessed are those who won't get to see, right?

He's talking about you.

You didn't get to see Jesus risen from the dead in the flesh, right?

But blessed are you if you still believe.

But he's not scolding the one who's asking for evidence and stepping forward in trust.

And it's incredible, like the power of the evidence.

Thomas went from I will never do this, to my Lord and my God.

So let's look for that powerful evidence that turns you from an unbeliever to a believer.

There are several resources you can use to go to the bottom of your questions and doubts.

Uh the first one is personal study, right?

Ask for resources.

There's plenty of good readings.

Um you might think that your doubts and questions and objections are unique, but uh you maybe you're not that original.

And people have already raised those questions and they've got good answers to them.

So we've put actually a few resources that you can use, read uh books and websites.

Uh, if you tap on the sign in front of you, uh this is gonna send you to a page we've put up with a number of resources that you can benefit from that would uh answer some of those classic questions.

You don't need to have all the answers, but I think as a Christian it's important to have a good grasp of at least the basics, right?

The most important things we believe.

Does God exist?

Was Jesus risen from the dead?

Are the scriptures reliable?

Right?

And then maybe why is there so much evil in the world?

Yeah, kind of those basic basics.

I think it's good to have a good understanding of how we answer those big questions.

Another resource is that we are starting a small group this evening, uh, and my group is gonna be on apologetics or the defense of the faith, and we're gonna be covering those basics, right?

Those big basics of the Christian faith.

It's not too late to sign up, you can just go to the uh connection center and connect with the group.

Um and then another resource that I want to recommend to you for dealing with doubt is a ministry that I actually uh volunteer with that's called talkaboutdoubt.com.

Um and it's a ministry that's really cool, it's just open on online.

People can go when they struggle with doubts on their Christian life and submit a question, and then they're connected with experts on that topic for a one-hour Zoom call where they go and break down the objections and say, hey, here's what we know, here are the arguments, here are the objections, and this is how you answer them, and then just this personal ministry against doubt.

And so I've loved to participate with these guys.

Um I I see all sorts of people who inquire and want to talk and have questions, all the way from just genuine struggles like I I believe, but please help my unbelief, all the way to very hardened unbelievers who still want to talk about it.

And they're obviously more frustrating conversations, but for me the s the approach is the same.

It's like let me give you the good reasons, and then what you do with them is really your responsibility.

But it's a great resource for dealing with doubt.

Um and then maybe I mean I'm not going to give you all the arguments for all the basics of the faith at the end of a sermon that's already getting too long.

Um but maybe I I can leave you with one simple way in which we know that Christianity is true this morning.

And that simple way is this.

How do we know that Jesus was risen from the dead?

In a surprisingly simple way, we know this because people were there and in a position to know, and they told us.

I mean, this is how I know so many things in life.

This is how I know that my brother was born from a C-section with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and came out blue like a smurf.

He's my older brother.

I wasn't there, I wasn't born.

But I know those things happened because someone was there and they told me.

In a very similar way, the people in the New Testament, the disciples, were in a position to know, they saw, right?

You saw Thomas, he touched it, he could see.

Blessed is he, because he's believed and he has seen.

And then they get to tell us.

Now we don't want to be gullible, right?

So it's not like we believe everything that every anyone says, you still need a reliable witness, right?

So that's why we look into whether the New Testament documents are reliable.

But as it turns out, they are, they pass those tests, and through them we can know that Christianity is true and that Jesus is what we claim to be.

And then if the evidence for you is still undecided, and if you're not even sure if you believe yet, there's one more recommendation I can give you, and it's come and live the life of faith.

Come and you're in the right place.

If you don't yet believe, or if you're not sure you believe, this is the best place to figure it out.

Um There's this French philosopher named Blaise Pascal who uh once said, Look, even if you don't know, right, if you don't have all the evidence, you still have to decide whether you're gonna leave like God exists or not.

And he's saying, Weigh the pros and cons here.

What if you're wrong?

Okay, let's say that um God does not exist and you're wrong and you go to church anyway.

What have you lost?

A little bit of time of sleeping in on Sundays, maybe?

But you've gained eternal life if he's there.

As opposed to if God exists and you get things wrong, then you have eternity to lose.

So purely on the risk analysis, you should live like it's true.

And the practical aspect of this is just come to church and talk about this and then see.

Come and see, and see maybe if God is real, we claim he's in his house.

You're in the right place.

So, what's your takeaway from this?

Don't despair if you have doubts.

Your faith is in progress, it's completely expected.

But take them seriously and walk them until you very confidently know that this is true, and be prepared to live a life of trust in God at every step of the way.

And you're in the right place.

Work out those doubts, believe, and be saved.

Amen.

So, my closing prayer for you is gonna be going back exactly where we started with John's words about the faith.

Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in his book, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast.

If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available.

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We would also love to meet you in person.

If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m.

We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.